Grammars as objects of knowledge: the availability of dispositionalism

An anti-dispositionalist interpretation of grammatical knowledge would maintain that such knowledge exists whether or not it can be behaviourally manifested; a dispositionalist interpretation, on the other hand, would identify that knowledge with the in principle possibility of certain behavioural manifestations. The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary case for the dispositionalist interpretation by accomplishing two complementary tasks: first, rejecting a prominent argument against the dispositionalist interpretation; second, advancing an original argument against the anti-dispositionalist interpretation. Both tasks involve rebuttals of certain key theses associated with Chomskyan grammatical metatheory, and therefore, provide new opportunities for assessing its viability.